


falling in slow motion

by arsonenthusiast



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Agent 8 is also there but he's not important to the story, M/M, You're Welcome, these are my takes on the male agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arsonenthusiast/pseuds/arsonenthusiast
Summary: It starts off slowly, like it always seems to.
Relationships: Agent 3/Agent 4 (Splatoon)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	falling in slow motion

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a whim at half past 2 in the morning. It took me two hours. You're welcome.

When you first met the rather infamous Agent 3, you're not intimidated.

More annoyed, actually.

He doesn't seem to like you, for reasons you can only guess at- the first of which being that you were effectively his replacement while he was off doing whatever he was doing in the Metro. 

You think this is a stupid reason to dislike someone. It's not your fault that he got stuck down in the Metro when the Great Zapfish needed to be rescued. You were there, so you did what needed to be done. It's not that hard to wrap your head around.

Beyond the annoyance, you wonder where the green patch on his face came from. You don't ask, of course. The two of you don't really talk at all, going off to do a quick mission and parting ways as soon as possible.

_What's his deal?_ you think briefly, before you dismiss the thought. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad, right?

-

The next time you two meet he seems to have lightened up at least a little. He's not being friendly, but he's not acting nearly as cold towards you as he did during your initial meeting.

He still annoys you, but you appreciate it anyways.

The mission this time still goes by relatively quickly, with not much talk between the two of you, but you part ways feeling as though maybe he never hated you at all.

-

The third time you meet, it's not at the Splatoon HQ. It was a complete by chance meeting - you decided to go turfing and when you step into your lobby you spot him on the other side of the room. He doesn't seem to notice you at first, but, as you wait for one final person to enter the lobby, you can _feel_ the moment when his gaze lands on you and stays there.

You risk a glance over at him. He snaps his gaze away, the final member enters the room, the teams for the first match are made and then you're off, ready to ink the fuck out of Camp Triggerfish.

Three is on the other team, so you don't see him for most of the match, until suddenly he has you cornered, about to crush you with his roller. Because of course he's using a roller.

You don't like rollers. They're annoying. Three is no exception.

They're also, from your experience, relatively easy to catch off-guard.

Not giving yourself a chance to think about what you're doing, you reach up and wipe a few drops of your team's ink off of his face.

"Purple really isn't your color," you say. He freezes (is he blushing?) and you take the opportunity to splat him, ink the area up, and move on, deliberately not thinking about what just happened.

You've used that move before, but even when it did work, the target had never reacted quite like that.

Oh well. You're sure it doesn't mean anything.

You finish the match, your team winning only by 0.02%. You glance at Three. He pointedly avoids your gaze. You shrug, and let it slide.

The two of you play a few more matches, your team winning most of them (whether Three was on your team or not), and with Three making a point to avoid you as much as possible throughout the course of each and every one.

Eventually, you decide that you've battled enough for the day and exit the lobby. You don't notice that Three's followed you until he's suddenly pinned you to the wall.

"What the _fuck_ was that," he says.

You shrug. "Hey, you're the one who fell for it."

"Shut up!"

"It's true."

He rolls his eyes in apparent exasperation and leaves the tower. After a moment, you follow.

It makes sense that he'd get mad over the shit you'd pulled during that first match, as it was kind of an underhanded blow. But he'd seemed a bit... too angry about it. You couldn't place your finger on why, so you let it go and moved on with your day.

-

You don't see Three again until Marie calls the both of you in for another mission.

"We need you two to go down into the Metro today. We've noticed some suspicious activity down there and Agent 8 is otherwise occupied. Three, can I trust you to make sure Four doesn't get himself killed down there?"

You roll your eyes as Three nods stiffly. It couldn't possibly be that hard to stay alive down there.

Spoiler alert: you were very wrong.

You quickly learn that down in the Metro, things are much different than they are in Octo Canyon. The enemies are deadlier and less easily distracted, and the ink that they shoot at you seems to be more lethal than normal ink.

You can't help but notice that it's the same color as Three's scar.

The two of you manage to make it to the point where Marie told you to investigate without getting shot down by any of the Sanitized Octarians, the weird music playing down here blasting through the station the entire time. When you finally reach your goal, you stop.

There's nothing there but the remains of a telephone.

You glance over at Agent 3. He stares at the telephone pieces for a moment, before he suddenly grabs his face where the scarring is and sinks to the ground, face contorted in pain.

"Three? Are you okay?" you ask, then curse yourself for asking a question with such an obvious answer.

He says something, and it comes out somewhat garbled, but you can make out the words "phone", "away" and "me". With no better idea of what to do, you start tossing the telephone pieces into the pit below, not noticing as your fingers brush some of the weird goop that was clinging to them. You're too focused on helping Three to care about that. It probably doesn't matter anyway.

When that's done, you head back over to Three, who seems to be recovering from... whatever just happened. 

"You okay now?" you ask. After a long moment, he nods, and you help him stand up. He stumbles when he tries to step forward, and you sigh before putting your arm around his shoulder. 

"Don't worry," you say. "I've got you." He nods shakily, and, luckily, no enemies have replaced the ones you took down on your way here, so you both make it back to the surface safely.

You sit him down on a bench near the HQ, and then head inside to report to Marie what happened.

She, quite understandably, gets a worried look on her face when she hears what happened to Three.

"I knew I shouldn't have sent him down there," she admits. "I would have sent you with Eight instead, but Callie has him doing something else today and you two were the only other options. Maybe it could have waited until tomorrow, but I didn't feel like we should take that risk." She sighs. "Will you tell him I'm sorry?"

You nod, and head back outside to Three, who is looking significantly better.

"Marie says sorry for sending you down there," you report. He nods.

"Yeah, I thought she might say something like that," he says. "It's not really necessary, but apology accepted, I guess."

He looks at you, and you look at him, and neither of you says anything, and you suddenly feel very awkward. You hurriedly break the eye contact and ask if he thinks he'll be fine going home.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Oh, that's good. Um, text me if you need anything, though."

"Four, I don't have your number."

"Oh. Yeah. Um, can I see your phone for a second?"

Three hands over the phone, and you punch in your number before giving it back.

"There. Now you can text me if you need anything."

A strange look crosses Three's face, and you find your own heating up a bit for reasons you can't explain.

"Anything? Anything at all?"

"Within reason."

"Ah. I see."

After another awkward silence, you say goodbye and leave for home, feeling _very_ confused as to what just happened.

-

The two of you meet a few more times after that mission, mostly through turfing, but nothing eventful happens then, just the usual battling things. Three still goes out of his way to avoid you when you're on opposite teams, probably because he's afraid you'll pull the same stunt you did the first time.

If he hadn't been going out of his way to avoid it, that probably wouldn't have happened, seeing as that kind of thing typically only works once.

Perhaps Three thought that he might be the exception to that rule. Why? You have no idea.

Whatever the case, nothing abnormal happens until, one day, you get a text from an unlisted, yet familiar, number telling you to come to a certain address. And, because you are bored and also apparently have no sense of self-preservation, you follow the instructions, making your way up the stairs to a certain apartment. You knock on the door with little hesitation, and then freeze when, of all people, Three answers the door.

The two of you end up just staring at each other in pure shock for a few minutes before a voice with a distinct accent comes from inside.

"Are you going to let him in or not?"

Three (rather reluctantly) lets you enter, then walks to the kitchen.

"Eight," he says, his voice taking on a menacing undertone. "What did you do."

"I invited your cr-" he stops speaking, which was probably a wise decision on his part judging from the look on Three's face. After a minute, he corrects himself. "I invited your friend over to your house, that's what I did."

"How did you even get his number?"

"Marie."

Marie knew your phone number?

Oh well. You suppose you shouldn't be surprised.

As Three and Eight start arguing, Eight's interrupted statement plays back in your head. What could he be saying that started with "cr" that Three would get mad about him saying-

Oh.

_Oh._

"Eight, were you going to say 'crush'?"

The argument stops, and Three's shocked expression (combined with the fact that his entire face was flushed red) more than answers your question.

"Oh thank god, you're not as dense as I thought you were."

"We've literally only just met, why would you have any opinion on how dense I was?"

"Because this idiot over here won't shut up about you half the time."

_"Eight."_

You both glance over at Three, who looks painfully embarrassed.

Eight realizes he's gone too far.

"You should... probably go."

You don't complain, leaving the apartment as quickly as possible without knocking anything over.

However, you take note of where he lives. Just in case.

As you walk down the street back to your own apartment, you consider what happened.

Does Three actually have a crush on you of all people?

Judging from his reaction when you suggested it, it certainly seems like he does. Only, you don't think you like him back. ~~Probably.~~

Ugh. Next time you meet is going to be so unbelievably awkward.

-

As fate would have it, the next time you meet happens to be the very next day, where Marie calls you both to Splatoon HQ and charges you with going back down into Octo Canyon to take care of some rogue Octarian soldiers wreaking havoc.

It's eerily silent as you both make your way to where the issue is supposed to be. There's no one else around, and Three certainly isn't about to talk. You're not inclined to either, to be honest.

Finally, you're getting close to the incident site. You can hear the rogue soldiers doing... whatever it is that they're doing. Looking over at Three, you can see he's about to charge right in.

"Wait," you say, grabbing his arm.

He stops and looks back at you, blushing a little. You realize what you did and abruptly let go.

"Um," you say as you try to get your thoughts back together. "Don't rush in there. There's a better way to go about it." You look around, and see a stack of boxes very near to the group of Octarians. "Can you get behind there without being seen?" you ask. He considers it, then nods.

"Cool. You do that. I'll circle around to the other side and then we can take them by surprise from two sides at once." Without further ado, you start quietly making your way around the Octarians without being seen. Agent 3 hurries off to do what you said.

The plan goes perfectly. All the soldiers are dispatched in a matter of minutes.

"Well, that could have gone a lot worse," Three says, not looking at you.

"You're welcome."

"Shut up."

You roll your eyes and start heading back to HQ. Was it just you, or is he being a little more sensitive than usual?

You don't really make any effort to be quiet, assuming that since there were no enemies on the way down, the same should go for heading back up. And that assumption appears to be correct.

Until, suddenly, a stream of magenta ink almost hits you in the face. It would have hit you, actually, if Three hadn't pulled you out of the way at the last second.

You barely have time to register what had just happened before Three takes out the Octarian with his Hero Shot.

You have to take a few deep breaths to calm down. Once you do, you realize that Three is still holding onto you, and you feel yourself blushing, although you're not sure why. After all, you'd already established that you don't like him in that way. 

Right?

While you're preoccupied with your thoughts, Three realizes what he's doing and abruptly drops you like a hot potato. He walks ahead, telling you to "come on". You roll your eyes, pick yourself up, and follow, doing your best to forget what had just happened.

-

A few days pass after that without seeing him at all, giving you plenty of time to process what had happened and realizing that hey, you might actually have feelings for him after all. You dumbass.

You're really not sure where they came from, to be honest. All he'd ever really been to you was an annoying person, but a good partner. Or at least, that's what you'd thought. Evidently you had been wrong.

You walk into a turf lobby, twirling your dualies absentmindedly, and then you see Three standing off to the side, away from the other people in the lobby, just like he always does, and your face turns bright red.

Oh. This match isn't going to go well, isn't it?

The stage is Camp Triggerfish, just like that first match the two of you had shared. Ever predictably, the two of you were on opposite teams.

You spend most of the match tagging along behind your teammates, inking any spots they missed and taking down opposing team members trying to splat them. Eventually, though, you find yourself inking alone.

You hear someone clear their throat. You turn around. And, of course, it's Three.

You're in the same position as you were the first time.

"Oh... hey, Three."

"Hey, Four."

He walks towards you, clearly planning to splat you, having apparently finally forgotten what happened last time.

You don't think about it. You just run over to him and give him a quick kiss, right on the lips.

His entire being seems to short-circuit.

You blush as what you just did actually registers in your brain. 

"Sorry," you say, laughing awkwardly.

And then you splat him.

You don't actually get much done the rest of the match, but your team wins anyway.

You decide to leave. That one match was enough for today.

You're about to exit the tower, when you hear Three calling out to you from near the lobby you were just in. Sighing, you wait for him to catch up. When he does, he tries to speak but ends up fumbling his words a lot until he finally manages to speak coherently.

"So, um. What you did back there, during the match, um-"

"It wasn't meant to be just a distraction," you interrupt. 

He blushes.

"O-oh."

You blush as well, but you smile tentatively at him. "Do you, um, want to do it again?"

He nods, and you gather up your courage before walking over and kissing him again.

He kisses back this time (knowing it's coming does wonders in that department, it seems), and it lasts a little longer. It's still not a very long kiss, but it's short, sweet and to the point. It works.

"So.... um." You look away, still blushing. "Do you want to try dating, or...?"

Three smiles. "Yeah. I'd like that."

You smile back, and the two of you leave the tower together.

**Author's Note:**

> Agent 8, in the background: It's about time.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the product of my need for mlm Agent 12. I'm going to pass out now


End file.
